Pre-Autism (Part 1)

I think one of the hardest parts of Autism (and any special needs child) is the changes your life requires immediately. There’s a reason you get 9 months to prepare for having a baby-its because huge changes are coming and you need time to prepare. When you receive your child’s diagnosis or they are born with a handicap, your life changes INSTANTLY. You have no choice but to accept the changes and start the uphill fight–there really is no time to “mourn” your old life–its go-time.

To really understand our journey with Jude, its important to know what our life was like before November 2017…

2007-2010

I graduated college and moved to DC to fulfill my dream of working in politics and government. I

landed at a PR firm that I did loved and learned a lot, but I knew within my first few months that I was never intended to work for a boss. I tried hard, and was at least moderately successful, but the monotony of the 9-5 killed me. My head was a non-stop reel of ideas, “what ifs”, “why don’t we?” and it was clear it wasn’t for me.

My decision to leave my job, and work for myself, wasn’t motivated by hating the work or people, or more money; I made a pretty good living at my former job and had friends there. I just wanted ultimate control of my schedule and flexibility (you will find the ultimate irony in this later…).

June 2010

I was negotiating hotel contracts for meetings and events and doing conference management. I absolutely loved having no boss, no commute and doing what I enjoyed, while making a great living.

I completely consumed myself with work and building my business. I would schedule work things over ANY personal plans, without even a thought. Work WAS my life. I would watch all our friends have children and thank God that wasn’t me.

Children were in NO WAY in our plans for the foreseeable future.

I would travel from one event, to another site, and back and think nothing of being gone from my husband for 10, 14, 20 days at a time. I never missed anything for my customers and never RSVP’d no to an event.

2013 was no different. It was my biggest year, actually. I had accumulated 10 customers and hired my mom to work for me full-time. This was intended to free me up from all the administrative and accounting work, to allow me to grow the business. I couldn’t wait to be unshackled from the chains of accounting and admin work. I was traveling so much and taking on more work than 2 people could possibly handle, but that just meant I had to get quicker, smarter, better… not take on less! I wasn’t interested in being #4, I wanted to be #1…

I would land from being gone, order chinese food delivery from the Uber, sleep for 12 hours, then get up and complain about the jet lag and take a nap.

Our life was so exciting and “glamorous”, filled with experiences that I never dreamed we’d have. No kids, dual-income, practically unlimited travel perks–I thought this was true happiness.

March 10, 2013

This is the day, I was named the youngest VP at my company (#4 in the company) after only 2.5 years. This girl on the stage feels so fulfilled at this moment. While she’s trying to play gracious and humble secretly she’s in love with herself and loves being “important”. She’s too young and immature to really respect the position she’s just been elevated to so quickly. She doesn’t have a clue of the responsibility that this level demands.

To this day, when I see the video from my speech that night, I want to climb through the phone and choke her out. I want so badly to yell at her, “You’re not as smart as you think! You haven’t actually encountered anything that difficult, or endured something that truly rocks your world. Please stop acting like you’re tired and stressed from all the travel, free parties and hotels.” (she never listens though! LOL)

While no doubt, she does work incredibly hard and is a fast learner, she doesn’t really “deserve” all the accolades, trips, awards that she’s getting. Did she earn them? Yes. Does she appreciate how she
ultimately achieved them and who helped her? Not even close. Even sadder, she doesn’t even see what she’s sacrificing in exchange for this limelight.

Yeah, this girl in the picture has a very distorted view of reality. From social media it looks like she’s so happy–and that’s not a front–she thinks she is.

In November, on a red-eye flight coming back from Seattle, I got violently sick and spent most of the 5 hours in the airplane bathroom puking.

This was not the first time that year.

My non-stop diet of airport food, rich room-service meals, and Chick-fil-A were catching up with me. I had already had an emergency appendectomy earlier that year, so I decided on this flight that I was going to finally take my doctor’s recommendation seriously… The next morning, I schedule a colonoscopy that my doctor had referred months ago.